[Sca-cooks] An Event Without a Feast, was Cookery book at Longleat House?

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Sun Nov 8 11:24:23 PST 2009


On Nov 8, 2009, at 8:40 AM, Judith Epstein wrote:
>  Maybe a couple of events without feasts would clarify the issue of
>  the relative importance of cooks for them.

Johnnae replied:
>  You must understand that major events, even events like Crowns
>  and Coronations, routinely run without feasts in this kingdom.
>  Some offer hotel catered banquets that don't sell out and get canceled.
>  Others never plan a feast to start with.
>  Even the 40th ran with just lunch taverns.

Well, out here in The West, there are NO Kingdom level events 
guaranteed to have a feast.

We have no lunch tables, day boards, or feasts at our 3 Crown Tourney 
and 2 Coronation camping events, including TWELFTH NIGHT Coronation, 
which usually happens in a hotel and does NOT have a catered meal. 
There's a room set aside for eating in where it's strictly BYO.

We used to have feasts at our two Collegia per year. But first each 
Collegium went from a 2-day to a 1-day event with a feast on Saturday 
night, and then feasts were curtailed for two reasons: 1) the sites 
we usually use, schools, don't let us use there professional kitchens 
and often have no home ec. room anymore, and when they do they 
usually have home-grade not-fully-functional electric stoves; and 2) 
not many people stayed for the feast. Now we're only having one 
Collegium per year because it's such a money loser. Small groups of 
dedicated foodies sponsored the Perfectly Period Feast in 2007 
(English, early 15th c.) and next year there will be a late period 
Spanish PPF.

I'm not very up on feasts in other Western Principalities and in our 
Marches, but in The Principality of the Mists we have 3 feasts per 
year: two Investitures, and one Bardic Competition and Feast, which 
has been losing money. The Investiture Feasts are often poorly 
attended, too, especially the Fall one (Nov. 21 this year) because 
it's usually pouring rain and people want to get home before it's too 
dark and dangerous to drive.

Some branches of the Mists have feasts in December - that's when most 
of the feasts are. And because they're at branch level - barony (not 
as big a deal out here, since they are subordinate to the 
principality they're in), province, shire, canton, college - these 
feasts are quite often not historically accurate, and often pot 
lucks. Some branch "feasts" during the lighter time of the year are 
just your basic American cook-outs.

So, no historical feasts? There are very few anyone would really 
miss. Not much of a threat...
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita


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